Picture Post: Sing-Sing Rehearsals

Left the hospital after rounds this morning. I have to admit: it felt good to leave during a workday for once. It's intense here, with outpatient clinic every day, the never-ending stream of sick patients. The hospital is running over capacity on Medicine, Pediatrics, and OB - the floor beds are out, and we're low on those, so some people just bring their own mats to sleep on the floor with. I've admitted one or two children every single clinic here: vomiting and diarrhea or pneumonia or both, mainly. So I stepped around the mats and the beds and I admired all the babies and I found a bili light (it's tied to the top of the warmer) for the littlest baby and I got rounds done.
And then we loaded up the Tracker with me and Matt and Becky and Miriam and Lena's husband Jonathan and some other man - Anton - who came along too, and we headed out down the road - and up and down and up and down.


The occasion for this particular sing-sing appears to be the exchange of many cows from one tribe to another.  Today, they were putting on makeup and rehearsing for the big exchange of cows and pigs on Saturday, so we got some behind-the-scenes shots of the preparations, as well as being included in the circle dancing.

At our first stop, they told us they "weren't ready yet" so Becky asked if they minded if we watched them prepare.  They didn't mind. Miriam hopped out of the Tracker and into the arms of a local woman she'd never met before.  She's such an ambassador - nobody can resist her smile.  And we thought we were going to have problems keeping an eye on her...
So we trekked off through the kaokao fields and past crops of peanuts and corn to a few little houses where men wearing fancy headdresses were getting their faces painted.  Miriam made friends with the local children, and was much admired by the elder women as well.  Light-skinned children are popular here, it seems.  She tolerated being touched and having her arms and legs rubbed without any complaint.

After a while, we were told that antap there was a whole group of people who were dressed, painted, and ready to practice some singsing dancing, so we headed up the road a way, and we heard them before we saw them.  They were marching in a circle, accompanied by whistles, and chanting.  According to the translation given to Becky by our guides, the chanting meant "Look at me!"  They danced around for a while, and then our picture-taking got their attention.

Brother Robert, the bigman of the group - and, if I understood correctly, the one who'll be receiving the cows on Saturday, stopped to talk with us about the singsing and to ask if we wanted to come back on Saturday (and if we did, could we bring some of the pictures?)  After some questioning about the whole process, he and his retinue admitted that "once upon a time" a very long time ago, the singsing might have had something to do with spirits - but he was quick to tell us that since "the government" and the missionaries came to the Highlands, that now it was simply for celebration and cultural reasons.  I suspect that our being missionaries may have had something to do with his not wanting to discuss the history of the event, but I'm not certain.

We watched them dance and shout for a while, and a great spectacle it was indeed!  The boy in the picture above was the only child in the entourage, but some of the children nearby had painted designs on their faces as well.  They shared a marble with Miriam, and left paint-marks on her arm.  She had a lovely time.  There was also one woman with paint and headdress, dancing at the end of the line.  She had on the same garb as the men, only she was wearing a shirt and knee-length shorts underneath it.  We didn't have a chance to ask whether she had a particular role.

The dancers graciously agreed to pose for pictures with us, and then insisted that they had another dance that they wanted to show us before we went. So they brought Becky into the middle of a circle, and linked elbows around her, and then jumped up and down, moving counterclockwise, and shouted.  There was a lot of shouting.

After they shouted at Becky for a while, then they wanted Matt and I to stand in the circle.  They gave me the spear that the man on the left was holding to hold - I'm still not sure why - but they seemed to appreciate our participation.  There was a whole lot of handshaking and a long speech by Brother Robert about how exciting and "cultural" the actual cow-exchanging on Saturday would be, and how he would be very pleased if we came.  There would be plenty of food for us and more dancing.  And if we wanted to come back tomorrow, we would be welcome as well for more practicing, because they're celebrating all week long.  He seemed very happy that we were there.

Miriam caused some amusement among the kids when, after the circle dance, she took one of the bamboo rods that the dancers had discarded and did her own dance with it.  There was much amusement, and we took our leave.  Becky's on call Friday so she can't go Saturday, but she promised to tok save to the other missionaries about Saturday's cow-exchanging ceremony, and if we can find someone to take us we'll head back up there.

Matt has video of the dancing; once we have some Internet stability we'll post it so as to make the above bits about shouting quite clear.